The COLORS Collection

When you see a color, what do you think you will taste?

Will the color be sweet, sour, or bitter? Maybe tart? What about mossy, toasted, fruity, or comforting? The taste of a color is always in the eye of the beholder. With that in mind, we created the COLORS Collection—six ice creams and frozen yogurts that will inspire you to ask yourself, what does color taste like?

Ultramarine Blue Buttermilk Frozen Yogurt

There aren’t many blue foods in the natural world. Can you think of any? Blueberries? Sort of. They’re almost a black-blue hue. What other blue foods come to mind? Most foods we associate with blue are candies made with dyes. Or they are “blue” scents created for the fragrance world when perfumers want to evoke the sea or the sky. Making an edible true-blue flavor is challenging! But blue is an unbelievably affable color, don’t you think? What aromas, flavors, and emotions come to mind when you see the color blue?

Garance Vert Clair

Green is a funny flavor. Green things are either alive and edible or decaying and poisonous. Or they’re herbaceous and mossy or acrid and smelly. But that’s why we love the color so much. If you make a green flavor with a little too much yellow or brown, your mind will perceive it as yucky. But if you brighten it with just the right amount of yellow or blue, it tastes grassy and almost seems plumped with hydration! Did you know the scent of green apple is known to make people feel like they are in a larger space? It’s helpful for those who experience claustrophobia. Isn’t green a magical color?

Persian Orange Buttermilk Frozen Yogurt

Consider orange—the color and the fruit. The scent of orange zest is known to increase feelings of joy. The color orange is known to help people feel good about doing work and even to get more work done in less time! Bright red-orange is an invigorating color. It’s radiant and always seems to be on your side. We think of orange as an encouraging friend. Here’s something to think about: imagine how different a juicy orange smells from a roasted sweet potato with cinnamon! Isn’t it fun to think of how different a reddish-orange color is from a burnt orange? One tastes like spring and other like fall.

Noir D’ivoire

Sometimes red wines have notes of tire rubber or black marker or asphalt. They do! As components of the overall flavor profile, those notes make sense. Isn’t it strange how that works? Tire, marker, asphalt—those flavors can be thought of as shades of black. It’s interesting to note how all the different varieties of black affect your mood or perception of flavor. Black can make you feel anxious—like the world is closing in on you or like you are floating out in the infinity of space. Black can stoke a sense of adventure. If you see a large black dot on a piece of paper, maybe you’ll pretend you can jump right into it and see what’s on the other side!

Cadmium Yellow Buttermilk Frozen Yogurt

Often things that look yellow, taste yellow: that’s because we’ve learned to associate flavors with colors. But think of how different banana is from white grapefruit or from buttermints. They’re all yellow but very different in flavor! To us, a bright crisp yellow is refreshing and even energizing. But some yellows—the fainter ones of the spectrum—remind us of drab, institutional buildings. Cadmium yellow makes us think of sunshine reflecting in a pool of water. Or lemons on a cutting board. What do you taste when you see yellow?

Ombre Brûlée

Similar to green, brown can go both ways: it can be warm, nutty, and emotional or dirty and down-and-out. Brown can just as easily make us feel like we are eating cookies or walking past a dumpster. How delicious! Brown can evoke the aromas of campfires, vanilla, or toasted marshmallows. Did you know that vanilla has notes of smoke and that those flavors are known to make people feel like they are in a smaller space? Often the scent of true vanilla is given to newborns because it makes them feel more secure. Don’t you love brown?

The COLORS Book

What does color taste like? To help you dig a little more deeply into that question, we created the COLORS Collection chapbook. With commentary from Jeni, the 24-page book was designed by our Art + Design Team and drew inspiration from classic modernist graphic design and gorgeous, timeless children’s books that appeal to kids and adults alike. The collectible book is available to peruse in our scoop shops, but the only way to get your own copy is to order the COLORS Collection online.